Kitchen Table Chats #46 – FODMAP, Gluten-Free, and Your Questions!
These are the show notes for a podcast episode recorded especially for patrons of my main show (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast). These patrons pay a monthly subscription to be part of the podcast community and in return receive monthly exclusive recordings (like this private podcast) along with lots of extra resources. You can get access to the recording and see how the community works by visiting www.patreon.com/ancestralkitchenpodcast.
What we talked about:
- Meatballs from Practical Paleo Everyday by Diane Sanfilippo
- FODMAPS, gluten-free eating and leftovers
- Modern Homesteading Conference
- The expense of grocery stores, the importance of overlapping systems
- Question: Natural beauty and skin care – what do we use?
- Question: UHT milk and yoghurt – does using it defeat the purpose?
- Question: Aluminum foil – how to get around it?
- Question: Storing produce in the fridge and freezer – how to get around plastic?
- Mentioned – Souper Cubes!
- Question: Where to place homeschooling in the day and work it in with ancestral food?
Transcript:
Andrea:
Hello, Andrea. Hello, Alison. Happy Tuesday.
Alison:
Tuesday, yeah.
Andrea:
We always record on a Tuesday, and I had to stop and think, what is it?
Alison:
It’s usually Tuesday. Sometimes we kind of confuse each other by not doing it on a Tuesday.
Andrea:
That’s true. The one time we throw ourselves off. Well, did you… Oh, my gosh, we haven’t recorded in a couple of weeks now. I know.
Alison:
Because I had a trip. You’ve forgotten how to do it. Yeah.
Andrea:
Apparently as per our technical difficulties this morning yeah but.
Alison:
We’re here listeners don’t listeners don’t know that we’ve been basically trying to record for the last 45 minutes literally 45
Andrea:
Minutes oh yeah as i like to tell my kids you don’t know the struggle yeah but here we are we made it this will be such a good episode indeed my power doesn’t go out yeah.
Alison:
I’ve got everything crossed for it so um did you i’m presuming with all this um trying to record chaos you didn’t actually get to eat this morning
Andrea:
It is more actually because of the power uh the power struggle yeah the power struggle chaos with the solar panels i did not eat anything but i did eat last night really delicious little dinner i had cooked um bunch of the day before i made 147 meatballs oh my gosh and they’re half pork half turkey and i followed a recipe that has long been a favorite it’s from the practical paleo every day or something like that book, And it’s, she calls it her Thanksgiving stuffing meatballs. So it has shredded carrots, diced onions, diced carrots, or diced celery. And she makes it all pork. I did pork and turkey mixed. And then she has a seasoning. Does she stick it together with eggs? Nope, no eggs.
Alison:
How does she stick it together then?
Andrea:
It just sticks together. Just the meat.
Alison:
Just the meat. There’s no like almond flour or anything else like that in it.
Andrea:
No, no. None of that. And then a bunch of seasonings, and I used a bunch of stuff from Megan’s shop, so it was super delicious and tasty. And I stood at the counter and weighed each meatball I was making them so I could make them all exactly the same.
Alison:
You weighed 147 meatballs.
Andrea:
That’s dedication. That’s why I do this. I do this with my dough balls, too. It’s like I can’t stop myself.
Alison:
I do it with both cakes, but I’ve got an excuse that I’m writing a cookbook, you know?
Andrea:
Yeah. Well, I’m reading a cookbook, so it’s kind of the same thing, right? So, anyways, I baked two sheet pans, and happily they could bake at the same time, because I thought, oh, man, I’m going to have to run the oven for like an hour. But I didn’t. I baked them both at the same time, and then we ate some that night, and I froze most of them on racks on the sheet pans, so that they then I could pick them off easily and throw them all into a bag which might answer one question that’s coming up in the podcast so.
Alison:
Was your meat previously frozen or was it fresh when it went in
Andrea:
Uh so yes it was frozen I know people say if it’s been frozen don’t um, don’t refreeze it but no I.
Alison:
Wasn’t I wasn’t gonna ask that I was gonna ask another question I think it’s fine to refreeze it when you’ve cooked it. I’m not bothered about that.
Andrea:
Yes, that’s what I do all the time.
Alison:
But what I do find is quite often frozen meat gives off liquid. And so I wondered, cooking meatballs on sheet pans in the oven, whether you ended up with a little kind of puddle at the bottom of the sheet pan? Or was it just no water?
Andrea:
I actually did. I did, actually. So I cook the meatballs in the pan, then I… And this is where I’m going to get letters telling me I’m OCD. Then I took them out. I put racks. I poured all the liquid off into a container. Then I put racks in the pan and I put most of the meatballs back on the pan and put those in the freezer. Of course, they had to be like perfectly organized and the same number across.
Alison:
You’re joking. I can’t. You should see my freezer at the moment. When we went to the market on Saturday, I said to the boys before we went, right, I’m not buying any meat. Don’t let me buy any meat. the only thing we’re buying are bones because our freezer is so full that I can’t shut it and it’s just like a sort of a jigsaw game to try we’ve got to get this extra thing in there on the freezer can we please yeah can we please try to reorganize everything else that’s in the freezer so we can fit this container of soup in there so um the thought of lining 147 meatballs and there being space in a freezer to freeze them when i’m desperately trying to you know shove in a bag of giblets that came out of my chicken into the corner of the freezer oh luxury well
Andrea:
I’ve done that i’ve done that too i have to say even with having big freezers when it comes to butchering season i’m like sliding things down yeah you know just wedging it down but i feel like i like things to be organized you know i’ve told you once and you were like what you do because sometimes seems so disorganized but it it’s because i’m so disorganized that i feel like i have to sometimes keep the physical things in order otherwise i will.
Alison:
Yeah it will absolutely
Andrea:
Explode yeah but um anyways i froze most of those meatballs but last night what i made was Well, I kind of made two meals. So we had a bunch of noodles that I had cooked from a previous meal. And so I opened a jar of broth and I put leftover meatballs that were not frozen but had been in the refrigerator overnight. I put those meatballs in the broth on the stove and just let them simmer to heat up. Then in another pan, I poured all that liquid that had come off the meatballs and I heated it. Then I poured that liquid over the already cooked noodles from the other day, two days ago. So we’re talking like histamine chaos over here. And then for myself, I cooked a smaller container of gluten-free noodles from Jovial. They’re really good. I really like them. And… Then I had meatballs with the gluten-free noodles and.
Alison:
You know. So do you buy from Jovial separately or does that come through Azure?
Andrea:
That comes through Azure, yeah. Okay, I get it. You probably could buy it straight from Jovial. I haven’t done that, but you probably could. I didn’t know.
Alison:
Who Jovial were until yesterday. I’d never heard of them. So now I just hear you. You know that thing where you don’t hear anything forever and then suddenly you hear it like a hundred times in a week?
Andrea:
Lizzie said something. Who has this word been on my life?
Alison:
On the um discord channel about uh jovial recipe and i thought well this is and then i was looking up something this morning and a web page came up from jovial and now you’ve said jovial i was like oh
Andrea:
Okay they yeah they were an early bringer of einkorn to the u.s company one of only a few that was bringing einkorn from because nobody here was growing it in the beginning there was no market for it. And in the beginning, I guess I mean, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And so they were transporting it in from Europe. And I don’t remember if they were the company I was buying it from. They might have been, but there was like, I couldn’t find anybody selling it. Okay. So they were one of just a few and it’s really hard to find in the stores and things like that. But of course it’s much more accessible now. Yeah. Yeah. And they do their noodle manufacture in Italy. So, yeah, I don’t know that much about them, but I know it is a family that owns the company. Anyways, so, all that to say, I had noodles and meatballs, Allison.
Alison:
Okay, that sounds nice.
Andrea:
Yeah, it was good. And it was one of those meals where we were using up a whole bunch of little pieces of things.
Alison:
Bits and bobs, yeah, I get it.
Andrea:
Yeah, which is always satisfying for the fridge. So what did you have, though?
Alison:
So I’m trying to clear out the freezer this week. We’re not clear it out, but, you know, kind of slim it down so at least I can get something in there. And we had a risotto that I’d frozen that I made last week. So it was a whole chicken that I roasted and then saved some of the meat. And then the next day I put the bones in the Instant Pot to make stock. And then I used Arborio rice. Actually, I didn’t do it. I left instructions with Rob.
Alison:
So I’m doing FODMAPs at the moment, so no onions. So I chopped some celery instead and put that in olive oil and then put the Arborio rice in and then used the broth to slowly add it. I explained to Rob how you’ve got to have the broskite kind of warm and you’ve got to spoon it bit by bit and then stir it. And then shredded a lot of chicken back in there with some rosemary and salt and pepper. And just the alboreo rice does its wonderful job and goes all kind of creamy and comforty and lovely. And we had that day last week and then the day after we had it for supper. But I froze one portion, which we pulled out last night to defrost. And then we chopped some chard and just steamed it and when it was cooked I’d stirred it into the risotto with a bit of extra liquid and we had that with some fresh parsley snipped on the top it was lovely that sounds amazing can you tell me? yeah go on no
Andrea:
You say well.
Alison:
I was going to say I thought I’d missed the onion but actually I didn’t it
Andrea:
Was really it just.
Alison:
Tasted really lovely um I don’t know if celery if that wasn’t there I don’t know but um I mean I was just impressed I thought oh how can I do this without onion you know onion yeah wonderful um but no it was absolutely fine with celery what
Andrea:
Were you going to ask okay that’s good because I was going to ask you could you kind of give me a thumbnail picture of what FODMAPS is because I don’t really know much.
Alison:
About it yeah yeah so FODMAPS is a diet developed by Monash University and it’s the only diet that doctors in this country recommend for SIBO that’s where it kind of comes from and it restricts the sugars I’m probably going to get this wrong and Katie listening in Germany will know more about this than me probably it restricts the sugars that the bacteria that generally cause problems for SIBO which is small intestine overgrowth it restricts the sugars that they feed on so it’s something like fructooliosaccharide or something or other you know so fructans for instance so honey’s got fructans in you’re not allowed honey on fog maps so that’s your anything anything that’s got yeah anything that’s got fructans in it at a certain density um so for example as i said honey you can have straight sugar if i was eating sugar but you can’t have honey and you can’t have agave there are certain vegetables um that have these fructo or the other sugars whatever it is um in them like onions and garlic and if you’re having fruit apples have them in i haven’t really looked at the fruit section because don’t really eat fruit um and all gluten grains aside from spelt made into sourdough are not acceptable so
Alison:
I’m basically gluten free at the moment with the exception of spelt sourdough
Andrea:
Interesting, Allison, that you and I seem to keep, I don’t know, it seems like every time we talk, even if it’s been a couple of weeks, which it rarely ever is, but whenever we talk, we’re on these similar wavelengths of things that, like, it’s not the same, but it’s similar things that we go through, or they, like, echo each other somehow. And it’s kind of hilarious because I’m eating gluten-free right now, which I haven’t, I don’t think, ever since we started recording together i don’t think i’ve really been gluten-free but for now i am as i’m trying to just figure out all the thyroid stuff but yeah.
Alison:
So i feel like you know it that’s what i’m trying to say i’m trying to say that sometimes we we do these things as experiments you know not because we know we’re going to do this we’re definitely going to do this but because it’s a path to learning more about the situation we’re in and our own bodies and how it responds to right things and that’s what I’m doing
Andrea:
It up so like we need a new one but yeah i’m running out of set of soap, Yeah. But anyways, it is something that would be good to get tested eventually.
Andrea:
Vendor their first year i had a baby the second year and then this year i went but I had all the kids with me and no Gary, so I did not go as a vendor this year, but I would like to go as a vendor next year, just having a table for the podcast, because it’s.
Andrea:
Ingredients to make two different dinners or three different dinners, I forget. And usually if I make anything, I’ve got like half of what I already need, you know, I don’t know how to explain it. Like, I had to buy the things at some point. But, yeah. But, like, it came, like, if you bought a spelt loaf versus, you know, six months ago I bought a bag of spelt berries and then a week ago I ground some and baked a bunch and I put some in the freezer and now I have the spelt loaf. Like, the time and the expense cost in the moment doesn’t feel as intense.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
You know? Yes. So what I, okay, so what I found was when I have to go buy everything at the store and, like, assume you have nothing, it’s ridiculously expensive, like, prohibitively expensive. I was like, nobody, nobody can eat this way. Like, I see why people think you need to be a millionaire to eat organic food. Because I wasn’t even buying, like, I bought organic meat, but I was in a grocery store. It’s not like I was even at a farmer’s market where it would have cost even more.
Alison:
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea:
You know, buying an a la carte, just one little piece of meat and eating it all right away. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just a different… I don’t know. Mine was a bug. Yeah, and I was feeding, let’s see, seven, eight, nine, ten. There was ten of us. So it wasn’t like I was making a tiny meal. You know, it had to be big enough to feed two full families.
Andrea:
So it’s every once in a while, like, there’s things that you know, and then when you experience them physically, it’s like, again, it just, yeah, like a shock and a very tangible reminder. And it made me want to just, as I was thinking about the podcast, it made me want to just like hammer down, put more weight on the fact that, week over week, month over month, year over year, you evolve your sources, your storage situation, your routines, and this becomes a more absorbable layer, dispersed, and much more affordable lifestyle versus just saying, walk into a grocery store or walk to a farmer’s market and buy everything organic and the highest possible option. And we accept no less than the best. And if you really love the planet, you would do this. And, you know, at the end of the day, we just we have to look at this in the lifestyle mode.
Alison:
You have to make it work, you know. Yeah. I feel like if you’re just going to dive in and. By everything absolutely 100% perfectly from the beginning, you’re just going to run away from the lifestyle like a mile, you know, even having done this for how long Rob and I have, you know, we make compromises that we ideally, if we had freedom in all of the parts of our lives, perhaps we wouldn’t choose to compromise. But, you know, we’re on a budget, we have other priorities in our life too and so we make the best decisions we can and like you said it’s a layer thing you know now I’m buying all my um grain as berries and I’m able to buy in bulk and plan differently because of that but that’s only because I bought the mock meal but it took me a long time to decide to buy that mock meal you know for many years I did so I was on a different level at that point you know so it’s it’s you know I guess eating this way I spent more years of my life without a mock mill than with a mock mill you know so and I’m still on this journey we’re still on this journey there are still things that I would love to overhaul further in what we’re doing but we’re not we’re not ready for it yet either with the time or the money really so
Alison:
You’re right it’s um when you the further you go down the path the more you realize like like when you did you know when you go back to the store that oh my gosh this is we’ve come a long way figuring out a budget and a routine and methods that work for our family to be able to eat in a way that we’re happy with but it um it’s still I think for both of us it’s still a work in progress isn’t it
Andrea:
Absolutely and like you I feel like there’s things where I still compromise that you know, in my perfect world, I would have this, that, or the other thing, you know, a cow in the backyard, an extra 40 acres of pasture, you know, just little things. But, It’s not a perfect world. Shocker. And we have to both. This is the thing that I find complex in myself. And just talking about the freezer organization and the life organization is an aspect of that, which is I have to strive for the perfection and also be at rest with what is. Which are two seemingly conflicting states of being.
Andrea:
But finding a peace with the balance of those two, I feel like is just kind of my perpetual striving, I guess, my goal. Yeah, yeah, trying to stay right at the edge of I’m pushing myself and am I doing what I can between also… You know, saying this is the way it is right now and I need to be okay with that. Yeah. Those are two delicate kind of blades to hold at the same time. It’s like holding gasoline in one hand and fire in the other.
Alison:
I feel like when I was younger, I kind of, the perfection was the more important thing. And the older I get,
Andrea:
The more I feel like- One hundred percent.
Alison:
Like being okay with it is the perfection, you know?
Andrea:
I agree.
Alison:
And that’s harder. actually.
Andrea:
I do. I do. I remember telling somebody, like, I would, I remember working all night and then.
Andrea:
Like brushing my hair putting on makeup putting on my clothes laying down in bed for 30 minutes and getting up and going and going to like meetings and working because like that’s what it took to get the things done and i’ll and i was just like i don’t know what people’s excuses are you know but um now i’m like you know what if i can’t get that done like when we were leaving for this trip I wanted to make um buns to bring on the trip and it just came down to the point where I could see that I was going to be up for another four hours or I was going to go to bed and I was going to get some breast yeah and I decided you know what I’m losing the battle with getting enough rest and I was just like this isn’t the hill I’m willing to die on I know exactly how much those expensive organic buns cost, I am willing to pay that price to get this, like I would pay that to go to bed right now. And that was a conscious choice, you know. And that’s not really a sustainable choice. I can’t do that every single time I want buns, which means ultimately at some point I have to figure out, okay, do we either not eat buns or do I work into my life a sustainable way to make these? And going on a trip is a little bit of an exception. You know, we have to do a bunch of work ahead of time. We’re trying to prep systems for the animals. It’s like we’re doing unusual quantities of work before we go out the door.
Andrea:
It’s, to my mind, perfectly acceptable to say, I can’t also handle this last thing. But that’s, again, accepting that I’m in an unusual circumstance. And if that just became a pattern, I’d have to say, okay, something’s going on here. What’s wrong?
Alison:
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea:
But anyways, the revelations around food, I feel like, are constant. And I always…
Andrea:
I have in the back of my mind. The other thing, Alison, that I just felt very consciously was, you know, being in other people’s homes, staying in someone else’s home who’s, you know, while I was there, our friends were like, okay, got out their phone. They’re like, show me where the podcast is. Download a podcast player app. Like, sign up for the podcast because they’re like, I’m going to start listening. Like, I want to evolve what we’re doing. but we’re starting from kind of zero. And being in that space and seeing how much needs to evolve and how big of a knowledge gap and the frustration that exists, like, I know consciously I want to do things, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to begin. I felt my compassion and just deepen even further because I don’t want, that’s one thing that’s really important to me with the podcast is I feel like a lot of places, a lot of people go to listen to How to Eat Better and they just feel attacked. Like, you’re not good enough because you’re not really trying and clearly you don’t love your family because you just ate a conventional banana. And it’s like, that is not at all how I think it.
Andrea:
And I know it’s not how you think either. And what I see is that people desperately want to get in, but the virtue signaling gate keeps the knowledge from them somehow.
Alison:
Yeah, and also they’re just bombarded with all these visuals of perfection. And people saying this and that and the other. And smoothies being blended at, you know, 100 miles an hour with some music in the background. And just breads and ferments and you know this and that they’re just bombarded by it all the time and and you i just talking about it i think gosh you’re being bombarded by that all the time you would just go into overwhelm and and just be like oh i don’t know where to start it that’s not a way to start any kind of endeavor to just because then you’re starting
Andrea:
From place of fear you’re starting with fear you’re.
Alison:
Starting with panic
Andrea:
Distress guilt shame all the things that marcus patchett could tell us are the opposite of helpful when it comes to and getting the most out of your food.
Alison:
That’s why perhaps the podcast is has resonated with people because the best way really to start something is to to find like a friend and just chat to them about it and maybe they’ll show you some things while you have a cup of tea together and yeah and the podcast has that energy to it which is different to the world of information that’s available out there and so perhaps that’s the
Andrea:
The scientific things yes the scientific things the beautiful and the perfect those all have value and they’re important and they have to be part of the equation but they aren’t the only piece and i feel like if you look online, that’s all you see. These, you know, percentages of this, and you’re failing if you don’t get that much vitamin A. And your loaf has to look like this tall, powerful, perfect, fluffy, patterned thing, you know. And then you don’t see. I know enough creators for YouTube and Instagram to know that behind the screen are lots and lots of failures. And even those creators who try to put all of those failures on screen so you see it, our mind just latches on to. you have a look at that perfect lotion, you know?
Andrea:
So, so it’s, it’s hard, but it, it made me feel Allison even more deeply, the importance of the work that we’re doing. And if you’re listening to this right now, then you are a podcast supporter, which means you’re as much in this as we are and you’re invested in getting this information out to people. And you care about the way this message is being shared, which to me is just completely mind-blowing. And the fact that all of us together are working to get this entire message out there to people. When I was in this family’s home and they were telling me, like, we’re having this health problem and this health problem and, like, these emotional issues and, like, our kids are struggling with this, but we noticed if they don’t get dye, they do better with this. And, like, help us. We just need to figure out how to make the food work. And I was just saying, let’s start with broth. Let’s start with broth, you know, like simple, listen to the podcast, listen to, I gave them like two episodes, like start with these episodes and just to have a sense of, you know, on one, like hope that there is a way out, but not, not pulling on too many threads too quickly and getting overwhelmed with like, oh, there’s so much I need to do. I’ll never do it all. Like, No, don’t look at that. What we need to do is can you integrate broth into your life right now? Let’s just focus on that.
Alison:
I feel like that. You know, the more we get a catalog of episodes, I feel like there’s a danger that, you know, new listeners who come to the podcast scroll back down 130 episodes and they’re like, oh my gosh, overwhelm, overwhelm, where do I start? And so I you know maybe there’s a need for us to do some signposting around that or do some way of guiding people through them because I mean I don’t know some people just go I start at the beginning and they go through it and they do it slowly and it’s all fine but um yeah I we’re not into overwhelm neither of us is and it it feels like gosh we’ve got this catalog now and people could want to listen to them all and that’s yeah necessary just listen to the one that is talking to you in that moment you know
Andrea:
It’s because both you and I have done things to the point of overwhelm. And sometimes we still do.
Alison:
Oh, I was just like, we’ve done them. I’m thinking, oh, I’m doing them. I’m fighting that passion every single day.
Andrea:
Yeah, yeah. And so I am always sensitive to like trying not to induce that in other people.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
But it’s why, well, you know, it’s why you had to get out thumbscrews to get me to write down recipes. because I was like, well, as soon as you write it down, people think that’s the way you should do it. And then they don’t, you know. But we’ve got to give people a starting place. And, you know, there’s this podcast I listened to, Allison, a long time ago that was helpful on the subject of education. And one thing that they did, because they said, too, they’re like, well, we’ve been doing this podcast for six years now. And if you try to listen now, it’s going to be overwhelming because we’re talking about, like, high schools and how to do your kids’ high school math. But you’ve got a kindergartner. So, they had a page on their website that said, you know, like, basically, if you’re new, start here. And it was like, listen to these episodes first, then these ones. And I found that super helpful for myself and then also when I shared the podcast with others. So, maybe that’s something we could look at one day.
Alison:
Yeah, I agree. That’s probably a good place to go when we’re not overwhelmed. Yeah. Right, we’ve got some questions to answer. Shall I read the first?
Andrea:
Let’s take them.
Alison:
The first two are from Lucy, who is a relatively new supporter. Welcome, Lucy, and thank you for joining us.
Andrea:
She came on to the… Lucy was on the call.
Alison:
Wasn’t she? Yeah, on the call. She came on to the call on Saturday, which was really nice to hear her voice. She is European. she’s English but she’s living between Portugal and Paris which I thought was really beautifully romantic so we’ll say that so she’s got two questions the first one is about beauty so she says what ancestral methods can we adapt for a simple beauty routine any alternatives to cleansing lotions tonics and moisturizers for example I’m nearly 60 and trying hard to look after my skin um do you want to start with that one andrew shall i why
Andrea:
Don’t you start with that one.
Alison:
Okay so i am still in flux with what i’m doing with my facial and skincare at the moment it’s very simple and it’s been very simple for gosh at least since i’ve been with rob so you know, 15, 20 years. I don’t use any bottles of cleansing lotions or any bottles of toners, but I do still use moisturizers. So most days I wash my face with a soap, the simplest soap out there, olive oil soap. It’s just a bar of green that smells of olive oil. It’s got no additives in it. It’s just a really simple olive oil soap. And I’m going to wash my face
Andrea:
I say some days because other days I wash my face with unpasteurized honey.
Alison:
And I’ve been using honey on my face as a cleanser for literally 20 years.
Alison:
It is, as we know, it’s antibacterial, it’s antifungal, and it cleans my face in a way that doesn’t feel like it strips away as much as the soap does. So I kind of I have this um sort of swaying between the two of them and partially it’s it’s to do with practicalities partially that in the shower we don’t have anywhere to balance anything so I just take the soap in because the soap I can just about balance on the on the controls of the shower and so I wash my face with the soap but when I’m washing my face outside of the shower I can more easily access the honey which is more difficult to you know we’ve just got it in a little container so I have to take the lid off get some put it on my face and with the honey literally I put my fingers in a we’ve got a little tub of ware with honey and I put my fingers in I get a little bit of honey and I rub it on my face and then I use a little bit of water and I rub it in often I like to use the honey that’s a bit thicker because it kind of exfoliates as well I find when I use the honey my face needs very very little moisturizing afterwards when i use the soap my face needs more moisturizer um i have then gone through i’ve got two basic moisturizers that i use the first one is just um almond oil with essential oil put in there i like bay that is my favorite essential oil and i put like four drops of bay into a little container of oil, shake it up and I use that.
Alison:
I also have a very simple, relatively cheap moisturiser, which has got very few additive things in. It’s kind of this free and that free and that free, and it’s not got any scent.
Alison:
I find sometimes if I use the oil, my favorite is to use the oil, but if I use the oil too much, I sometimes get a spot on my skin and it’s from the oils. Because when I stop using the oil and I change to the store-bought moisturizer, I don’t get those spots. I don’t get one and I’m like, and then I go back to the oil because I love it. And then after a couple of weeks, I’ll get a spot and I’m like, oh, it’s because I’ve been using that oil again, isn’t it? So I’m kind of in, I flux between the two you know the mornings that I wash with honey sometimes I don’t use any moisturizer if I’ve used the soap and I feel like the oil or I fancy the smell of the bay because I love the smell I’ll use the oil sometimes when I feel like my skin is not quite so dry I’ll use the shop moisturizer um I wanted to say that Fiona who is in um Herefordshire just by me uses something called blue argan oil and she talked about it when we had the UK meet up in January and she uses that alone on her face um I think she cleanses with it too I have cleansed with oil in the past but again I find I had the same problem that occasionally I would get a spot
Alison:
Um I went through quite a long period about 10 years ago of using no moisturizer at all so literally washing my face with honey and not moisturizing and I had read that if you just kind of see it out your face will produce its own oils and pretty much like you know people who literally never wash their hair say that that happens you know after some time it regulates itself and Although I did feel over time that slowly my skin wasn’t as dry, I really struggled with the dryness, you know, with nothing on my skin after cleaning, even with the honey, you know, which isn’t as drying as soap, particularly the skin around my eyes. So, yeah, at the moment, I’m sometimes honey, sometimes the simplest olive oil
Alison:
Soap and sometimes just oil to moisturize afterwards. I always moisturize my neck with the oil as well, you know, as my face. And sometimes this very relatively cheap, store-bought, simple moisturizer. How about you, Andrea?
Andrea:
Hmm. Well, I really love your honey situation. I’ve never done that. That sounds amazing.
Alison:
It smells nice, too. Bob does it as well. He doesn’t use anything on his face apart from honey. He doesn’t use soap.
Andrea:
Well, when you think about the land of milk and honey and like milk baths and washing your face with honey, it just sounds very much like a beauty treatment. It’d be a nice name for a spa. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don’t really have a very consistent routine, and so I might not be the best to answer this, because I feel like I’m just kind of fluctuate between using the—we get these baby wipes from Young Living that have, like, lavender and different oils in them, and so I’m like, all right, I’m washing my face with the baby wipe. So that’s real fancy, but—, And then I’m just washing my face in the shower. And then anytime that I use products, like if I have a toner or moisturizer or something, I’ve gone through various windows of time where I’ve made everything and that’s been really fun. And then I’ve gone through windows of time where I buy a bunch of products from Young Living and use those. And those are really fun. And then I’ve gone through windows of time where I just don’t do anything at all. And that’s fine. So I don’t know. I feel like I’m not the best to answer that question.
Alison:
That’s okay. So you’re picking and choosing and basing on what’s around and what you feel like and what you have in at the moment.
Andrea:
Probably mostly related to how much sleep I’m getting, actually. Yeah, okay. So when I’m, you know, when you’re like standing and bouncing the baby and you’re like, I think I just need to go to bed.
Alison:
Yeah then that’s it yeah what i wanted to say was um i point lucy back to the episode we did about hair care i know it’s not skin but it it’s an interesting um sort of ancestral take on hair and um as a spoiler alert there i i am using clay still to wash my hair and um i’m loving it and occasionally i put the clay on my face in the shower as well and wash my face with the clay but that does dry my skin just as much as using soap does um okay
Andrea:
That makes sense because it’d be.
Alison:
Soaking up every exactly soaking up the oils um but it feels nice um i feel like yeah um i don’t think that beauty routines for face need to be difficult i feel like it’s more important what’s going in your body you know that’s what all of us would kind of say listening to this podcast but yes
Andrea:
There’s just that’s versus.
Alison:
Exactly there’s such a temptation to buy all these products and you know you’re talking about store-bought prices sometimes when i go into a store i just i almost fall over when i look at how much the face stuff costs i’m like what people buy that that’s like 60 pounds people buy moisturizer that’s 60 pounds and i know what you could just have a jar of coconut oil you know and
Andrea:
And put that.
Alison:
On your face well the coconut oil is yeah
Andrea:
Oftentimes that these things are based on you know they’ll advertise i’ve seen all kinds of containers that say honey on them or you know avocado or whatever and you’re like oh okay but uh i think it’s um it’s the same reason allison we kind of touched on this in the KTC Live that went on the private podcast feed from last month in July, if you’re listening to this now.
Andrea:
Where there’s a promise given that, you know, like I was telling Francine, like the promise you see with curriculum, like you buy this book and your kid will be so good. Your kid will be so smart. Look, we raised 10 smart, super obedient, passive children with this book. See, you can do this too. And I hate that so much. And it’s all a lie. So something promising, oh, this is going to fix whatever face thing. I look at that and I think, okay, well, when I was staying in Hawaii, where it’s very, very humid and warm, my skin was like dewy and my hair was curly and like my body was different in the environment. When I’m on the east side of the state where it’s bone dry and parched and the moisture sucked out of everything, like my lips are cracking and my skin is peeling. And then I come over here in Western Washington, like it’s completely different. And then you don’t know what I’m eating. Like if I’m eating lots of saturated fats and collagen and broth, then I’m going to have an easier time. And if I’m not, then it’s going to be difficult. It’s like, how can you make a promise with a lotion? Because there’s a lot of things involved.
Alison:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, Lucy said that, you know, she’s nearly 60 and she’s trying hard to look after her skin. I feel like, you know, as I’ve been aging and looking in the mirror and seeing that, oh my gosh, my skin’s changing. You know I’m that there are sort of crevices and things appearing that that I don’t feel like that inside me when I look in the mirror I feel like I’m really that’s not that’s not me is it and I feel like really the best way to look after our skin is through what
Andrea:
We eat and.
Alison:
How we live and I think that, you know, being in an environment where there’s a lot of sun, it feels quite important to me to wear a hat.
Andrea:
That’s why.
Alison:
And also because I don’t necessarily think that sunglasses are the best thing for us in the sun. I think that our eyes need that light from the
Andrea:
Sun and that changes.
Alison:
Things in our bodies and protects us, protects our skin from the sun. But I think that the hat is a far better choice. and you know as I age and think about the skin on my face then I think right okay well maybe I’ll get myself some some nice hats that I can wear it feels more important to me to to shade my face when I remember to and when I want to and then just pay conscious attention to my skin and make sure it feels nice and I feel good about what I’m doing and try to accept the rest that comes with it. Yeah.
Andrea:
Well, remember eating those polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are the double bond fatty chains that are more unstable and they oxidize when exposed to oxygen and then they go rancid and people are consuming them oxidation is behind you know obviously there’s going to be natural gravity caused things like wrinkles and stuff like that and decreased collagen and whatever but still if we’re loading ourselves up on rancid canola oil, then we’re going to be fighting a harder upward battle with the oxidation in our body versus when we’re consuming fair amounts of antioxidants that are helping scavenge for those, free radicals and saturated fats.
Alison:
Sorry, I interrupted you. I was just going to say those antioxidants when we’re living in a world that’s so polluted and air that’s different to our ancestors you know we kind of have that extra need for antioxidants to help well even
Andrea:
The sunglasses thing you were saying when our thyroid or our hormones are imbalanced our our light sensitivity are you know our pupils are more dilated and our light sensitivity is higher and so just even something like is my endocrine system functioning is going to affect do i want to put on sunglasses or can i wear a hat or you know and and as i as i jokingly say i’m a big believer in letting your eyes be exposed to the sun but also when it comes to if i’m driving and i can’t see the road in front of me if i’m dead i don’t really care what condition my thyroid is in like you know so for safety if you need to wear sunglasses for safety i’m all about that but.
Alison:
Yeah you know i i tend to wear sunglasses on sunny days when it’s windy because i don’t want dust and pollen in my eyes oh
Andrea:
Yeah so i choose.
Alison:
Them then but on the days of it’s not windy i’ll put my hat on because i’m not so worried about the you know pollution and stuff going in my eyes through the wind um it’s a different choice really okay um should we move on to the next question good question another one from um lucy which probably is is more you than me um she says for the moment i’m using uht whole milk to make yogurt Will the bacteria in my culture still benefit my health, or does the lesser quality of the milk counteract those health benefits? What do you feel about that one?
Andrea:
This one is, I feel like, a little bit complicated. So… Um, it’s not that the bacteria, I’m going to answer to the best of my ability as a layman, not a scientist. I’m somebody who has read a lot about milk and used a lot of milk. So the bacteria, you can, you’re still going to, you can still get beneficial bacteria, obviously. But it’s other things that now you’re missing that have been damaged or converted in the milk and that could it’s kind of like the oxidation conversation now you may be dealing with some things that actually are acidic to your body okay and so you’re asking does the bacteria counteract that i don’t know i would almost say you know at that point you could just maybe.
Andrea:
You could make the argument that it might be better to get probiotics from just sauerkraut or something besides yogurt. Because it’s possible, and again, I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that the benefit of the bacteria is not completely outweighed by the cost of ultra-heat-treated milk in your body, which is calcium stripping to your bones. And especially if we’re talking, you know, Lucy said she’s almost 60 or something, right? And, I mean, once we pass the age of, like, what, 22, we’re not building bone mass, you know. And especially in the ages of, like, 40 plus, we should be doing, like, the jumping and the kind of, like, weight-bearing type exercises to help our bones maintain their mass.
Andrea:
And so then I’m nervous of anything that could potentially be causing bone loss. I know that, And supposedly, somebody can fact check this on PubMed if they want to, but supposedly higher rates, areas with higher rates of UHT consumption actually have higher rates of osteoporosis because of the acidic effects of that milk. Versus if you could, if there’s any way to find, and I don’t know what’s possible in Portugal and France, you know, I don’t know what the laws are there, but if it’s possible to find a low heat treated milk or raw milk, I don’t know. But yeah, I think I don’t know if it’s a coin flip on that one or if it’s just deciding what’s more important. But that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one for sure. I couldn’t come up in my head with a definitive answer because I just don’t have quite enough knowledge on my side.
Alison:
Well, it’s useful to hear your opinion for sure. I feel like you said there are other options for probiotics in the terms of sauerkraut but also in terms of drinks in Tibicos and in Mycobass and in Bozer and all these other things that potentially could provide some homemade probiotics without that concern if Lucy’s worried about that.
Andrea:
Yeah, it’s tough. That’s a hard one.
Alison:
Okay, Lucy, I hope that helps. Let’s move on to Vivian’s questions. We’ve got three different ones here which are practical. Okay. She asks, firstly, if you were to cook meat at low temperatures, i.e. 250F, 120C, and the traditional recipe calls for the use of aluminium foil, what other materials could possibly be used to contain the juices in the meat? Butcher paper? Andrea, what do you think of this?
Andrea:
Yeah, we haven’t had aluminium foil for a long time, or whatever you call it.
Alison:
Aluminium. Aluminum. Aluminum, aluminium.
Andrea:
I don’t know. I think we spell it differently, don’t you? How do you spell aluminium?
Alison:
I think we spell it the same. I think Vivian is American and aluminium looks…
Andrea:
Oh, okay.
Alison:
It’s the stress, isn’t it? Because we say aluminium and you say aluminium. You put the stress on the second syllable. We put the stress on the third syllable. Maybe you spell it differently. I could be wrong. I don’t know.
Andrea:
I don’t know. Anyways, yeah, I haven’t bought foil for a long time, so I just am in the habit of not using it now. So I use containers with lids if I want to kind of get that steaming effect of something. Like she’s saying cooking meat at a low temperature is probably the most often where I’d come into this. So, yes, I usually line the pan with a piece of parchment paper and, Um, butcher paper has wax or plastic on one side, typically, so I would be cautious about specifically that. But parchment paper, we get an untreated, unchlorinated one. It’s from the brand with a somewhat passive-aggressive name of If You Care. And that, I’ll put a piece of that down in a pan, and then I’ll put in the meat and put the lid on and let it steam in there. So yeah most containers i’ve got some kind of a lid for or i’ll put like a sheet pan over the top but i’d say that’s probably my most common workaround and then we just don’t have, the things like the little hobo packets or whatever they’re called when you kind of fold up a couple things in a piece of foil and i haven’t tried doing those with parchment paper specifically so i.
Alison:
Think um i think that having as many containers you can that can kind of fit into that mold would be useful you know there are in charity shops and thristles you can find like you know different sort of containers that have got lids like little oh yeah ceramic glass lids or glass containers or even you know metal baking trays if you’ve got two that are the same you can invert one on top of the other and clip it together that kind of thing um i’ve used baking tins loaf tins for bread to cook things in you know when they’ve had lids um rather than you know, put foil on it. So hopefully that helps. Yeah.
Andrea:
And with my metal pans, I always put the parchment paper down. Part of the reason is because you don’t always know what is in the alloys of those metals. And unless you paid over $700 for the pot, then it’s probably got aluminum in it. So I tend to just line metal with foil. I line the metal with the parchment paper kind of for safety. And then I line my cast iron dishes for convenience of cleaning afterwards. Oh, okay.
Alison:
Okay. That’s interesting.
Andrea:
Okay.
Alison:
Next question. What do you store your produce in, in the refrigerator instead of plastic bags to also keep them fresh? So I have experimented with different things and we’ve talked about this a fair bit on previous podcasts, I think, and on Discord.
Alison:
Um, so sometimes I wrap in butcher paper and when I do that, I try to keep it very, very tight. And sometimes I use elastic bands to keep that butcher paper in place, which probably means I’m sacrificing an elastic band because they tend to go kind of not elastic in the freezer. Um, I try to double wrap them if I can to stop freezer burn. Um i still have plastic tubberwares containers which i’m trying not to buy new plastic ones but i’m not going to just not use the plastic tubberwares i’ve got you know because they’ve still got some use in them and then when i get new containers i try to get glass ones now um vivian has another question which is how do you free think freeze things like homemade stock muffins portioned meats so pulling that question in um i use glass containers where i can and and i’m replacing those tupperwares with glass ones the glass ones have plastic lids so they can go potentially straight into some something like a microwave i guess um but it means that it’s a kind of a bit more flexible and and and they can sort of tuck into places i find the glass works really really well in the freezer they’ve all got straight hedges so you don’t ever get that problem that you get with kind of jars where one of them might smash because it’s expanded for
Alison:
Homemade stock um i have recently purchased some super cubes i had um a similar brand of silicone kind of portioned freezing things i had in italy but it was not very good the frame kind of broke and i couldn’t get super cubes initially having come back to england last month we bought some so we’re freezing stock in those um which just makes it so simple to get out you know one cup of stock or two cups of stock um for for a dish sometimes i will freeze them in there and then empty them out once they’re frozen into a container or a bag to make more room in my freezer um muffins sometimes sometimes i will freeze them in um tubalwares but very often i put those in plastic bags i try to reuse my plastic bags i wash them i hang them out to dry i turn them inside out i get as much use as i can from them um what happens your end with all their freezing and wrapping in in your um storing of food andrea it
Andrea:
Sounds pretty much the same i think we do just about the same on all those things we actually have a long roll of butcher twine that we use because i think we’d burn through elastic bands too quickly on our end but the twine works great and then also once the paper and the twine comes off we just throw it all into the fire and kind of disappears forever. Makes sense. The, yeah, I still use plastic bags in the freezer. We only get the gallon size and I do the same as you. We wash them, we hang them. I stick like a, you know, those scrubbing cloths that my mom makes? Yeah, yeah. So after I’ve kind of like dried them. Yeah. I stick one of those in it and I just throw them in a drawer that has the plastic bags in it.
Alison:
Okay.
Andrea:
And then I know it doesn’t kind of stick together if there’s any dampness in there. Yeah. And so, so a box of plastic bags will last us a really long, like a really long time because, you know, you can just keep reusing them. If I put… Raw meat in them, I kind of hesitate to reuse the bags. Although sometimes I still do, but, I try to pick the ones that look like they’re at the end of their life.
Alison:
Yeah, I do that too. I tend to think, right, oh, I’ll use this one for the raw meat because I think it’s not going to last very many more turns. I also feel like if it’s like a raw thing like haggis, for example, that I’ve frozen, it’s kind of, its bits are cooked and I don’t mind if it’s liver that’s got all the blood and everything and then i get the liver out and the blood kind of goes in every single crevice of the bag and i can’t yeah easily clean it out that’s why i’m kind of a bit more hesitant with reusing them it depends if it’s a clean a cleaner meat you know like a chicken leg
Andrea:
That i’ve pulled.
Alison:
Right or a um a kind of a bloody piece of meat so yeah
Andrea:
And then there’s also kind of the the difficulty sometimes of getting grease off of them and then yeah and or i look at like if i know what i’m putting into it right away like if i’m gonna wash it out and put a piece of raw meat back in it and throw it in the freezer that’s fine because i know when that meat comes out it’s getting cooked but if i’m gonna put you know a bunch of baked bread in it maybe not that’s different yeah okay yeah cool so i think we do about the same and i just bought super cubes last did you oh i did i’m so excited that’s.
Alison:
Literally ours arrived last week
Andrea:
Which ones.
Alison:
Did you get which ones did you get i
Andrea:
Think it’s uh two cups we didn’t.
Alison:
Get the same then we got two of the four times one cup containers so i’ll have to look at it
Andrea:
And see that is i got two also so that’s very strange and i got the supercubes specifically just a side note i did look around i when i looked up supercubes a bunch of other things popped up yeah they do and there seems to be a bunch of knockoffs yeah.
Alison:
So that’s the ones i had in italy because i couldn’t get yeah initially
Andrea:
Well what i thought was i was like okay let me look at me look at supercubes is what is supercubes specifically and i was like okay it is a business owned by a family that came up with the idea and that they’re selling it and i was Like, let me give my money to them instead of a slightly cheaper one that somebody just, you know, made a knockoff pallet of a million in China somewhere and was, like, shipping it to you. So I was like, let me just go with the actual idea. We’re using those.
Alison:
Super cubes when we render fat as well. So I will fill them up with lard and then freeze them and then take them out and put them in bags. Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s one chunk of fat that I can get out and put in the fridge that will last us, you know, a week maybe.
Andrea:
That is really, okay, I am doing that next summer under fat. Also, do you… Do you bake in them? It says you can bake in them, but I’ve never baked in silicone.
Alison:
I don’t feel very happy with baking in silicone. I kind of had this conversation with Ellie in the baking tins episode. Right. I used to bake in silicone, but I just don’t feel very happy with it anymore.
Andrea:
Is it the results more so?
Alison:
No. Well, for bread, it’s the results. My silicone bread tin just goes like a weirdo shape. But I also don’t feel very good about the fact that it’s not a traditional material when there are options available for baking that are traditional materials. And so I still have some muffin tins that are silicon. But I, how much do I make muffins? Like, I don’t know, twice a year or something. So I don’t really use silicon much.
Andrea:
You could probably freeze fat in those muffin tins too, couldn’t you? We have.
Alison:
That’s true. We’ve even, we’ve even at a push put stock in them and then kind of waited for it to go jellified in the fridge and then moved it to the freezer and then emptied them out after. Why have I never done that?
Andrea:
Alison, why have I never done that? That was a throwaway comment, but like that’s gold right there. Wait till it turns into jelly before you try to like, here’s me walking on the hallway shaking.
Alison:
I’ve spilt so much stock trying to transfer
Andrea:
It from the.
Alison:
Pot to the freezer and it’s just like, oh, I moved it or I’m balancing it on things in the freezer and as I try to shut the drawer, it just tipped.
Andrea:
Oh no, it tipped, yeah.
Alison:
Yeah, and so it’s just like, no, put it in the fridge first, wait for it to go jelly and then put it in the freezer.
Andrea:
Okay, that is, all right, moving on. That’s all I needed from that.
Alison:
Please stay, don’t go on. the rest of your day right um we’ve got another question from rebecca um which is a an interesting one the depths of the different topics that we have here i’m always interested in hearing about how people place homeschooling in their day how they support their kids interests and strengths and how they accommodate their learning struggles um she is homeschooling her children and she’s saying maybe my question really is about your and andrew’s experience at the intersection between ancestral cooking and home education. Oh, that is good. This is a big topic. It’s a worthy one. Do you want to speak to it to start with, Andrea?
Andrea:
No, why don’t you start on this one?
Alison:
Okay, so…
Andrea:
Sorry, I’ve thrown you out there.
Alison:
This is a big, big topic. So I’m trying to look at Rebecca’s questions in front of me and break it into smaller pieces. How many kids does she have? No, she doesn’t. No. She doesn’t. How do people place homeschooling in their day? So… Generally with Gabriel, Rob takes Gabriel in the mornings and I take Gabriel in the afternoons generally. And Rob tends to focus on the more structured stuff in the morning because that’s when Gabriel has the most energy and adaptability for his brain to work at that stuff, which he finds particularly difficult you know he’s not a natural reader he has some undiagnosed issues with a kind of dyslexia or a number you know mirroring of letters and he struggles to read um so the stuff that is in quotes harder
Andrea:
For him rob tends.
Alison:
To do in the morning and then in the afternoon when I’m with Gabriel I what we’ve worked and we’ve done this between us you know we’ve worked to each other’s strengths I tried being with Gabriel and doing the kind of structured maths and English learning but it just it didn’t work particularly well between the two of us it works better between Rob and Gabriel um in the afternoon I tend to focus on being with Gabriel in the kitchen sometimes and reading books together on other topics like you know science or biology whatever he wants to particularly focus on um sometimes we’ll watch stuff or we’ll look stuff up together that he’s interesting so we might read a book yesterday we were reading a book on the rainforests of the world and we found this bit about people who build their houses on stilts in Indonesia and something else about the Iguazu Falls in Brazil and he asked some questions about them, so we looked them up. So my time with him tends to be more unstructured.
Alison:
We make sure that Gabriel has lots of breaks and he directs the content of what he’s learning. So let me explain that. So, for example, for his reading, he’s chosen what he wants to read with Rob in order to have his interest. Because if we put something in front of him that he’s not interested in, he just won’t read it. And so he has chosen the things that he wants to read with Rob. So, for example, at the moment, they’re reading a book on birds. He’s very interested in birds and reptiles. So they’re literally reading an adult book of aviary birds. And Gable’s kind of got his teeth into that because it’s a topic that he’s interested in and I think that’s what both Rob and I try to do we’re just watching and seeing where his enthusiasm is and trying to encourage that and allow him to explore that whilst also putting some structure under there which will help him with skills that we know will be useful to him We both feel like we had very standard educational upbringings and that most of
Andrea:
The stuff that we learned at.
Alison:
School really was not particularly of direct use to us. And we both feel that what we were missing in our childhoods was someone being giving two hoots about what the things we were interested in and allowing us to explore that. And perhaps if we’d been gifted that, we might have been able to find the things that we wanted to do in our lives a lot easier than the struggles of the paths we’ve been on. And so because that’s kind of our journey, we’re trying to give Gable the space to find what he loves and what he’s good at and what he wants to explore whilst also ensuring that he has enough of the basics that he can
Alison:
Put himself out in the world in the way that he wants to.
Alison:
I feel like The journey that we’re going on with Gable with this is quite challenging because, you know, it feels like I like being kind of stuck in a in a food world where your friends are still eating normally or you’re kind of still want to go to the restaurants and have the things that they’re eating. I feel like this is this path has challenged me and my perceptions of what is education and what should he be learning. But I think that’s a good thing, and putting Gable front and center of both of ours. But I also think that it’s nice for me and Rob to, we’re both a bit different. So Rob has always been very, very self-taught in the things that he loves.
Alison:
Our approach to language kind of explains that. Rob literally taught himself to read Italian by reading comic books, whereas I had the grammar books. I you know did it sort of the traditional way and so when rob applies the way he’s learned and achieved anything in his life to gabriel he gives gabriel a different spin on things and then i come along with my particular kind of methods and things i’m interested in i’m passionate about the kitchen i’m passionate about history i’m passionate about language and and i’m trying to find ways to marry that with what gabriel wants to do and make the make the experience interesting for him
Alison:
What else did Rebecca say? How they support their kids’ interests so yeah, we support our kids’ interests by being attentive to him and watching and in trying to facilitate what he wants to most do accommodating learning struggles was the other part of Rebecca’s question and that has been hard, really hard because Gable really has, and still does struggle.
Alison:
But I feel like
Alison:
The world has these rules of, well, you should be at this level at this age and you should do this. And it’s all geared towards making you a cog in a machine that you can then go and be part of the standard capitalist society and work for someone else to make them rich and keep the world turning as it has done. And Rob and I have never really, you know, since we’ve been together,
Alison:
Our path has been finding another way of being and another way of living and saying that way of living is rubbish. And we must be able to live in a way that is respectful of our own natures and contributes to society and bring something to the world. And I feel like we want to help guide Gable into the space that is right for him. And that means supporting him through his learning struggles. But it also means remembering that the learning struggles are always painted in my mind, at least, of the picture of, well, this is what society tells you you should be doing. And generally i’ve said actually that’s a load of rubbish whenever i’ve tried to do that i’ve been like don’t like it here this isn’t how i want to live my life and so why why should i be following that with education um that was rather random stream of consciousness you want to jump in and add some things or tell me i’m wrong in some things or tell me what you were doing i love that
Andrea:
I love that so much because you’re highlighting in your description of what you do how.
Andrea:
How much your philosophy on education is coming through to me, which is really also exciting to see evolving, as I know you’ve been very conscious about it. And we kind of, in our culture, I feel like we’re sort of programmed to see education as the things you do to get a good job, basically, when you boil it down to it. And people say, no, that’s not really what it’s all about. But then when you start picking apart, well, why are you doing this class? And why is your kid doing that? And then it’s so they can go to this school, so they can get into that college, so they can get hired. It’s like all about getting the job. And that’s not to say that our endeavors in life aren’t ultimately to, you know.
Andrea:
Feed our family and put a roof over our head, because that’s kind of what humans do but seeing education as only a means to an end and only and the only end being working for somebody or something is um you know frustrating at best because then then the education materials reflect that because it’s like well this can be boring as hell but it’s gonna get you a job, so just suck it up and suffer through it. It’s like, what? This is my childhood. This is my life. I want to actually see the things that I love. And you also have that balance. I.
Andrea:
You know, the kids, sometimes we need to eat things that aren’t our favorite or, you know, study something that is difficult and we don’t really want to. But that can be balanced, like you said, with what we’re going to choose. Well, we have to read, so we’re going to choose a book that’s of interest. And it’s marrying those two things, which is so important. And one of the coolest things I feel like about homeschool, which is that you can explore and then expand on what they are actually interested in as a person. And that may change, too. You know, you’ve probably seen people ask Gabriel when he’s five years old, what are you going to be when you grow up? And it’s like, oh, my word, how does he know? Like, he doesn’t even know what’s out there. He doesn’t even know what the world offers. And I feel like looking at education as a chance to develop a well-rounded and interested mind that can grasp and tackle any of the interests that will be presented to them over the next hundred years of their life is the ultimate aim of education. Not just preparing for a job. Yeah, absolutely. That’s not what you asked me, though.
Alison:
I’m interested in how you accommodate the learning struggles that your kids have because you know every kid has a learning struggle and and you know when you’re balancing three of them each individual at the moment it’ll
Andrea:
Be four they’re all different.
Alison:
And you’ve got to do that all together you know I’ve just got the one and you know his learning struggles sometimes overwhelm me right and I and I wonder how you balance that with with more than one
Andrea:
Well, we definitely do have, I think we have a very, very similar situation to what you have actually with our kid who’s the exact same age as Gabriel, so that’s funny also. So the mirroring and flipping, which again, you know, up to the age of 10 and around 10 is still very normal to be flipping and mirroring letters and words and things like that. And so can’t always even necessarily be contributed to a diagnosis on its own. But just some of, and because I’m teaching multiple kids or have taught to read, then I can see, oh, this child is not learning in the same way the other kid did. Like, I dropped this in front of that other kid, and they absorbed it, moved on. This kid, we’ve come back to it 14 times, and it’s not. So then at a certain point you say, okay, we’re changing tax. Like that clearly isn’t working. We’re going to do something else, which I know Rob is good at that with his problem solving strategic kind of, you know, he did instead of me who was like, well, I’ll just keep unplugging and plugging it in 20 times. And Rob is like, let’s try something else. That’s clearly not going to change anything. So I can see that he takes that approach with the education, as you’re saying that he’s good at strategizing with Gabriel, you know, finding ways to help him access the learning that he wants to get to.
Andrea:
There are resources that I’ve tapped into for different things, with reading especially, and reading. So kind of turning to other moms who have done it and said, oh, I’ve taught, you know, seven kids, some diagnosed or not, you know, I’ve taught seven kids how to read and these things were useful for two of them and this worked for one of them and then three of them did okay with this. Like looking at that and also listening to the constant reminder that all the kids are not the same and the kid isn’t stupid. It’s not that. And, you know, some are going to be slower, some are going to be faster. And that’s just part of the normal scope of human experience. Just like with birth, some are going to go like this, some are going to go like that, longer, slower.
Andrea:
And um where it falls in the day right now it is very subject to the baby so it is he’s he’s in the full-on like empty the drawers and cupboards climb the fence poles mode yeah you know and of course so you kind of chasing him around saying no we don’t do that like yeah put let’s put this back and and he they learn over time but we’re in that super exploratory stage and he’s more so destructive than the other kids were which is totally fine and so to try and abate the frustration then basically we we have school carts everything’s ready like at the at the fire of a.
Andrea:
When we didn’t have the baby running around, and also in the early months when he was napping kind of on his routine, then we had on the calendar, this is the time of day when we start the school. But right now, what happens is we have the chores that happen before and after, or the things that happen before and after, and we just keep doing them. And then when he goes down, we drop everything, and we’re like, lesson. We just jump straight into the lessons at that moment. So that’s kind of how that is working. And one of my kids, she just, she needs to be moving around. So we got her, there’s different things I’ve heard people do, like the kids like hanging from a swing or I’ve even read while she’s riding her bike around in circles. Or some people say they have like a little tiny trampoline.
Alison:
Yeah. She has something that’s called. It goes out on her trampoline. Yeah. And Rob is doing stuff with him when he’s on the trampoline.
Andrea:
Exactly. Exactly. And that is helping him integrate.
Alison:
Yeah. In his body
Andrea:
And in his brain, that helps him integrate what he’s hearing.
Alison:
You were saying what your daughter has.
Andrea:
Yeah so what she does is similar because she has she’s similar to him or i think like if she’s sitting very still it may just be like washing around and over her because her body’s asking her to move and so she’s not able to hear what i’m saying and so she has what’s called a g board which um gary actually wants to make them so he bought one and it’s kind of like a slack line that’s on a, like a little surfboard, if you will. So you can kind of be standing on a slack line in the middle of your living room if you want to. And it takes all your body to balance on a slack line. So she’s very engaged from her head to her toes if she’s on that thing.
Alison:
So we’ve got kind of a, I don’t know what you call it, a board thing, which has got a semi ball underneath. It’s a circle. And you put both feet on the board, but then it’s wobbly. So that’s kind of like a similar thing, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.
Andrea:
Where you’re having to engage. But you’re also not, like, the problem with the bike is, like, you’re going and coming back.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
You know, you’re not in one place unless I put her on a, like, you know, those stationary bikes. But then the whole purpose of her is that I don’t even think that would use enough of her body because it would be holding itself up, you know? Yeah. So we’re still integrating that as it’s fairly new. We got it at the beginning of summer. So it’s fairly new to our routine and she hasn’t been doing lots of formal lessons over the summer. So we’ll see how that comes more into play. Okay.
Alison:
Yeah. Interesting. It’s always changing.
Andrea:
I think that’s the important part.
Alison:
There was something I wanted to talk about, which I didn’t mention, which is chores and doing things in the kitchen. So both Rob and I feel like it is vitally important for Gable to be part of the processes of the home. You know, the fact that we cook three meals a day and we have a lot of washing up from that and we make bread. And you know we make fermented drinks and so literally every day every morning there is something that rob and gable are doing in the kitchen that gable has to be part of that is just the things that get done so you know gable might chop some mushrooms to put in in dinner or he might be helping to mix the bread or he might take the washing out and and peg it onto the clothes for us outside or he might help clear up the the stuff so Rob can do about washing up um he that is you know every day every Monday to Friday there is something that Gable will do in the kitchen that will go towards the meal that we eat or the things that need doing in the house and both Rob and I feel like that’s just as important as the schooling he’s doing and that’s just become part of this life.
Andrea:
Well, because you’re looking at schooling as an aspect of being prepared to live a functioning, productive, happy, fruitful adult life. And that’s difficult if you can’t feed yourself. It’s really hard. And I know a lot of people, and you probably know some too, but a surprising amount of people who say, oh yeah, I got married and I didn’t know how to do laundry.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
Or I moved out and I didn’t know how to do laundry. And… Um, that, that’s weird to me, but it’s because, and I’ve heard people talk about this, they’ve said, well, it’s because I wanted them to be able to focus on their school and their homework and to thrive and do well. And the school asks so much of them. And when you see the homework load that kids have, and then they have their afterschool sports and then activities and clubs, and then meeting with friends or whatever, you realize there’s just that that consumes their entire life. Just basically being entertained as it were and then and they’re like well they needed to be able to succeed at all of these school things so that they could get into the right college so that they could get hired so then they go out into the world for one with a degree under their belt thinking that that means that they have experience and that they’re good at something which they sometimes aren’t, but also without a real grasp of how to function in the world. And I’m always surprised, you know, you and I haven’t been in the Facebook game for a long time, but when I was on there, I always saw things that said.
Andrea:
Gee, I’m sure glad I know how to calculate the quadratic formula, which I’ve never done ever in my life, but I wish I could file my taxes thanks for nothing public school and i’m like okay well is any aspect of your life preparation supposed to be up to your parents or is literally everything supposed to be up to the school like was the school supposed to teach you how to do laundry or you know we don’t have home ec anymore at school because that doesn’t help you get a job that doesn’t make you a good consumer so then you need um you you know you would expect then isn’t some of that up to the parents and what i see is parents who have really great balance like their kids do go to school they’re not homeschooling but the parents aren’t just like saying well i guess the school takes care of everything yeah they’re just as involved if not more so than homeschool parents that i know in their child’s education because they’re taking an active role which you don’t have to be homeschooling to take an active role in a kid’s education.
Andrea:
And you can have a homeschool family and completely look at it as the view of just getting ready to get a good job. Like 100% you can. That’s like a huge market right now. Just parents who want open and go textbooks that get them ready for college prep tests and get them into a good school. Like that’s the goal. Like it’s not a homeschool versus public school thing. It’s literally just a philosophy, which can be anywhere.
Alison:
Yeah I agree when we went back to when we go back to um Stelis sometimes there are a lot of children it’s a very very competitive area and there are a lot of particular schools in that area and um
Alison:
There’s this particular exam that the kids take when they’re 11 and a lot of the you know some of the people that gable were playing with were taking it and just rob took it and when he was there and it ended up you know pushing him onto his education path and seeing the 11 year old and seeing that gable was 11 you know when his friend was taking i just thought oh my gosh this what is this this guy this little boy is cramming for this exam and it’s just all about the exam and is he going to pass the exam will he get into the right school and i just no i felt so happy about the choices rob and i’ve made there’s one other thing i wanted to say about the um working in the kitchen is that gable does resist sometimes he really does he doesn’t want to do it oh yeah he he wants to do the stuff in the kitchen that he wants to do you know and so i try to create a balance for that so he’s he’s understands that there’s work that needs to be done in the kitchen that keeps this house going that keeps us eating the food that we want to eat but there’s also creativity and joy and that that can be infused in the kitchen and so you know I’ll I’ve been working with him to make some einkorn cookies and letting him choose how he wants to make them you know so he made one batch and we put chocolate in it and he did it like this and another one he didn’t put chocolate in and he’s melted the chocolate and put it on the top and etc but he also understands that, you know, if the mushrooms need chopping,
Alison:
The mushrooms need chopping and he can resist and he can resist, but he’s still got to chop those mushrooms, you know,
Alison:
Because it’s part of who he is as a member of our family. You know, we work together and we do it together.
Andrea:
And that is the thing to take into their adult life, which is, I’ve told my kids before and, you know, lectures go nowhere. Kids don’t hear lectures, but I can’t help it.
Alison:
I still lecture sometimes.
Andrea:
And they, oh, I don’t want to do this. And if anybody tells you that they never have any struggles, forget, don’t listen to them anymore because they’re just lying to you.
Andrea:
If the kids are, oh, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do that. And I tell them, all your life, there will be things you don’t want to do. And you have to do it. And I tell them, people who, you know.
Andrea:
Don’t want to do chores, so they just don’t do them, or they can’t learn the strategies. Like, I have had to learn strategies with my brain to get myself engaged in things that I don’t want to do. But I dedicated myself to learning those strategies because I knew that a fruitful and productive and happy and content and unproductive, at times, life can only be achieved by sometimes doing the thing I don’t want to do. Yeah. And it’s just that there’s no way to live where you only, you know, there is this very much promoted idea of, you know, working is bad and don’t work it, don’t want to work anymore. And you’re just going to live on this vacation life forever and only ever do what you want to do. And, you know, you and Rob are really good examples for Gabriel of you decided, well, what’s important to us is not being away from each other at a job. It is important to us to be together. That doesn’t mean you just dink around and do whatever you want all the time. You actually chose to work very, very hard and produce the things that were important to you, which was time together and being, you know, being able to walk instead of having to rush places in the vehicle or whatever.
Andrea:
But it doesn’t mean that you just said, well, I now expect that the world owes me the living and I’m going to just kind of hang out and get taken care of because I need to live my best life and I need to not work. You didn’t take that attitude, which is an attitude that’s out there, which is kind of disturbing. Yes, indeed. The YouTube influencer life, I guess, that people want.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
And then it’s like Meghan Markle. She’s like in shock that she actually has to work to get these deals. And then when she gets the deals and she doesn’t work, then she’s amazed that she loses the deals. But it’s like, you actually have to work, babe. You can’t just.
Alison:
Oh, it’s so nice that you comment on the society of the British royal family.
Andrea:
Yeah, well, it seems like every time Americans get involved in your British royal family, it don’t end well. No, we’ll see. We should probably take a note the next time some American tries to marry into your royals. Didn’t go well with Wallace.
Alison:
Whatever the lady’s name was. No, Wallace Simpson. Didn’t go well with Meghan Markle.
Andrea:
Yeah. How to raise an abdicator.
Alison:
We did have another question um which was slated for this episode about mayonnaise but we have that was from amy but we have talked about that quite a lot with amy and we talked about it um for quite some time on the ktc live that we recorded on saturday so if
Andrea:
Someone’s listening they’ve already heard.
Alison:
So if you want to um if you’re struggling with mayonnaise and you want to hear lots of tips, not just from Andrew and I, but also from other supporters who were on that call, then go back and find the July KTC in the private podcast feed. And we really did talk about mayonnaise and there were some good resources and ideas there as well.
Andrea:
Spoiler alert, everyone struggles and there is no fail-proof recipe.
Alison:
Yeah, everyone struggles. That’s what we learned. Right, after that, I think we’re probably done.
Andrea:
Hey.
Alison:
I can’t believe we
Andrea:
Did all those questions. We got to the end.
Alison:
About anything else blowing up, which was good.
Andrea:
Yeah, now I feel like we just keep going. It’s going so well. Why stop now?
Alison:
Because my stomach’s rumbling.
Andrea:
Yeah, mine is too. I need to go up and eat.
Alison:
Yeah, exactly. Okay, well, I shall speak to you next time, Andrea. Thank you very much.
Andrea:
All right, good to see you or talk to you. Yeah, indeed. Bye for now. All right. Bye.